There are abundant uses for superhydrophobic materials, including self-cleaning surfaces, anti-fouling surfaces and anti-corrosion surfaces. Approaches for producing surfaces exhibiting these properties include producing microtextured superhydrophobic surfaces or chemically active antimicrobial surfaces. Despite the impressive properties achieved by such known surfaces, the properties are not durable and the surfaces need to be replaced or otherwise maintained frequently. Thus, research to identify alternative approaches has continued.
Adding superhydrophobic powders in paints and epoxies, without adversely affecting their water repellent properties has been problematic since such paints and epoxies typically cover any exposed powder grains nanostructure and fills-in any of the powder's pores, thereby masking the powder's superhydrophobic properties. One way to achieve such binding has been to use a solution containing a very small amount of binder as compared to the amount of superhydrophobic powder being used. The problem with this approach is that such a small amount of binder simply will not provide a well bonded, durable coating. Therefore, a need exists for a method to incorporate superhydrophobic particles into paints and epoxies. A need also exists for resilient superhydrophobic paints and epoxies.